Thursday, September 29, 2016

His vaunted winning in unscientific polling is a lie; those polls where he did show ahead were hacked by 4chan and other alt-right white supremacist and neo-nazi thugs. Those are not 'real' numbers, and if he wants us to believe he is savvy enough to govern without prior experience, he better know this.

4chan and Reddit bombarded debate polls to declare Trump the winner

Donald Trump supporters artificially manipulated the results of online polls to create a false narrative that the Republican nominee won the first presidential debate on Monday night.
The efforts originated from users of the pro-Trump Reddit community r/The_Donald and 4chan messaged boards, which bombarded around 70 polls, including those launched by Time,Fortune, and CNBC.

As Stephen Colbert noted, Trump also claimed he won a CBS poll.............except CBS didn't DO a post-debate poll. Trump exaggerates himself, while he diminishes the very real accomplishments of others. He is an egregious liar, as noted by USA Today which just declared him unsuitable and unqualified to be president, in an historic sort of anti-endorsement.

[USA Today] went on to list and expand on eight reasons for its stance, including:
"He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief," "He traffics in
prejudice," and "He’s a serial liar."

When Trump realizes he can't bully Hillary, because she deals with him so deftly, making him look the jerk he is, he goes after another woman instead on whom to vent his frustration. The surrogate this time for his bitterness and frustration is a woman he successfully bullied before, Ms. Alicia Machado. Trump complains bitterly that Machado gained weight, but Trump himself has been a bit of a porker for some time now, and if anyone has long term problems controlling what goes in or comes out of their mouth, including his own foot, it is clearly Trump, not Machado.

Trump has alternately defended and denied his interactions with Machado, which is itself a contradiction. His conduct, whether he 'saved her job' or not, was wrong. But this follows a similar pattern where Trump has excused the sexual harassment misconduct of his buddy, another ugly pig of a man in every sense of the word, Roger Ailes, giving him a pass because he paid women and helped their careers. Apparently in Trump's dead-animal-covered mind, when a woman works for you he thinks you own her, and can abuse her, that she is not entitled and deserving of respect or consideration. No COMPETENT executive treats employees this way, and it bodes ill for how Trump would conduct himself in the oval office. His vulgarity is only exceeded by his misogyny and his ego.

Now, apparently not caring what kind of hole he is digging for himself with Latino/Latina voters, where this is widely being discussed and covered in Spanish language news in swing states like Florida, Trump is now claiming - as the New York Times noted, without evidence - that a sex tape exists featuring Ms Machado. Machado DID pose nude for Playboy, but Trump appeared on the cover of Playboy himself, (clothed, thank God) so he can hardly FAIRLY complain about that. Further, Trump's own wife has posed in actual porn photos, so it is not perhaps wise for Trump to indulge in attempted slut shaming, although he may very well lack the presence of mind to recognize that. Clearly Trump's hypocrisy rises far taller than his tallest building to date.

It appears that Trump is intending to attack Hillary on the basis of Bill's infidelity; given, AGAIN, Trump's own conduct and that of a number of his surrogates and advisors, like Rudy Guiliani and the Nut Gingrich, that cannot possibly end well. Particularly since there is no evidence that Hillary has ever engaged in adultery. Not Trump, not Guiliani and certainly not Nut G can fairly claim to be supporters of 'traditional monogamous marriage'.

He has gone on to claim Machado was involved in a murder plot, something claimed b a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, but she was never charged, much less prosecuted. Rather this appears to be a he-said-she-said accusation without merit. While the boyfriend was indicted he does not appear to have been convicted; THAT has been Trump's own 'out' before, notably in his settlement of two race discrimination cases and for accusations against him of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Perhaps we should call him "Double-standard Drumpf", or maybe "Double-standard Donald"?

There is an irony here in so far as Machado did not gain nearly the amount of weight claimed by Trump, successfully took her body and her career in hand, successfully was the spokesperson for a diet aid in Latin American, and has been consistently successful internationally following her year as Miss Universe, including success as an actress, singer and dancer, AND reality tv star far beyond the accomplishments wold wide in reality tv of Donald Trump.
It would be fair to say Trump is not good with numbers. By not good I mean in a Republican Math kind of way where numbers exist to exaggerate and lie, not as factual numeric values.
Most recently, not only was Trump gone from NBC, who asserts they do not want him back post-campaign, but also that Trump has per NBC grossly exaggerated his compensation numbers as far back as 2011.

I think it is a reasonable expectation that Trump will be making that face below again and again in the next few weeks, as he gets beaten by Hillary, and probably by Alicia Machado as well. He is continuing to lose ground with women, including Republican and other conservative women. Women will beat him in the general election, perhaps more than any other demographic.

Given the OTHER markets outside the US for Ford products, and the
import of US made components to manufacture Ford cars, Trump's plan
would make them less competitive in the US, but still very competitive elsewhere in other large markets in this hemisphere. The Trump Tax would be
counterproductive, ONLY hurting the US market. It is NOT a strategy that
would stop Ford expansion as a world brand -- world branding is
something you would think Trump understands better than his debate and
policy positions show. Trump's policies would only harm the US economy
and US consumers.

Other sources have cited Moody's Analytics as
supporting Hillary's economic policies, but there are others, notably
Oxford Economics, a Brit firm with offices in the US as well as the UK.
That includes the Wharton School from which Trump graduated.

Oxford Economics found that if fully implemented, Trump's economic,
tax and immigration policies would cost 4 million U.S. jobs, weigh down
global growth and U.S. consumer spending, and could spark a trade war
with other nations.
"Combining these policies together, the
impact could be significantly negative for the U.S. economy," says Jamie
Thompson, head of macro scenarios at Oxford Economics.
Oxford's figures are in line with other analysis. The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Budget Model forecasts Trump's immigration policy costing 4 million jobs and Moody's economist Mark Zandi -- a Clinton supporter -- also forecasts a similar job loss under Trump.

Thompson argues that Trump could hurt the very workers he says he'll
help in America's manufacturing sector. In Oxford's "adverse case
scenario" Trump slaps a 35% tariff on goods coming from Mexico, like
cars and air conditioners.
But the problem is that almost half
of the parts in those cars and ACs originate from U.S. suppliers. In
other words, U.S. manufacturers who ship to Mexico stand to lose
customers if the U.S. imposes a tariff on the products they contribute
to.
CNNMoney also found similar stories when we spoke to denim manufacturers
in South Carolina. They send an overwhelming amount of denim to Mexico,
where it is cut and sewn into jeans, which are sold in America. They
say NAFTA, the trade deal with Mexico and Canada, is critical.
"Without NAFTA, we would be out of business," says Rich Turner, who
employs 2,700 workers at his denim plant in Mauldin, S.C. Turner is
still supporting Trump because he refuses to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Trump of the tiny hands and big mouth is apparently willfully
ignorant about jobs, outsourcing, the national economy and the global
economy. He is specifically bone ignorant about the auto industry
generally and Ford Motor Company specifically.

1. Ford is NOT firing anyone when it exports jobs to Mexico. Rather
it is retooling the existing Ford plant in the US, a process of
investment in US manufacturing which itself creates jobs, and it is
continuing to employ all of the existing workers on a different set of
vehicles.
As noted by CNN Money:

The automaker quickly shot down Donald Trump’s latest
hyperbolic claim, made on Fox News Thursday, that Ford plans to “fire
all its employees in the United States” as part of a plan to build a
plant in Mexico.
Ford said there will be zero job losses in the U.S. as a result of the
new plant in Mexico. The Wayne, Michigan, plant that now builds the
Focus and C-Max that will move to Mexico will instead start building
other models — probably the new Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger small pickup.
“Ford has been in the United States for more than 100 years. Our home is
here. We will be here forever,” said spokeswoman Christine Baker.
The company has 85,000 U.S. employees, up 28,000, or nearly 50%, in just
the last five years. It has 8,800 employees at Mexican plants, and will
add 2,800 jobs there when the new $1.6 billion plant opens there in
2018.
Ford committed to build new vehicles at the Michigan Assembly Plant to
take the place of the Focus and C-Max when it reached a new contract
late last year with the United Auto Workers union, which represents
3,900 hourly workers at the plant.

2. This shift in manufacturing models is because, as noted in
multiple sources, the small cars being sent to Mexico are the least
profitable in the United States.
Again from CNN Money:

The small cars Ford is shifting to Mexico are less
popular and less profitable models. Trump has been using Ford for months
as a prime example of what’s wrong with U.S. trade policy, but Ford has
been strongly rebutting the GOP nominee.

3. Cars are assembled, but not manufactured in Mexico; the parts (at
least 50%) from which the cars are assembled are made in the United
States. That is ACTUAL US manufacturing and product export, unlike the
assembly process.
Continuing from CNN Money, addressing multiple products including cars:

But the problem is that almost half of the parts in those
cars and ACs originate from U.S. suppliers. In other words, U.S.
manufacturers who ship to Mexico stand to lose customers if the U.S.
imposes a tariff on the products they contribute to.

4. Cars assembled in Mexico and other foreign countries are not ONLY
sold to the US market, they are also sold in many other nations. Central
and South America are among the biggest new markets for US vehicles,
both used and new, comprising considerable exports that benefit the US
economy. This is part of the United States maintaining a competitive
economic global presence, which is arguably most important in our own
part of the globe.
From the LA Times:

Vehicle sales growth in China, now the world’s No. 1 car
market, is grabbing headlines. But Latin American countries including
Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Colombia also are seeing car sales
skyrocket. A rapidly expanding middle class and easier credit are
feeding the regionwide boom.

5. Trump policies panders to xenophobic anti-immigrant members that
comprise the majority of his base; however what would really result from
those policies is a loss of jobs, NOT the expansion of jobs in the
United States. It is worth noting that multiple sources (besides those
listed below) find the same thing, INCLUDING the Wharton School from
which Trump himself graduated.
From another piece at CNN money:

Oxford Economics found that if fully implemented, Trump’s
economic, tax and immigration policies would cost 4 million U.S. jobs,
weigh down global growth and U.S. consumer spending, and could spark a
trade war with other nations.
“Combining these policies together, the impact could be significantly
negative for the U.S. economy,” says Jamie Thompson, head of macro
scenarios at Oxford Economics.
Oxford’s figures are in line with other analysis. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model forecasts Trump’s immigration policy costing 4 million jobs and Moody’s economist Mark Zandi — a Clinton supporter — also forecasts a similar job loss under Trump.

6. The buying power and a resultant decline in the standard of living
from an overwhelming majority of US citizens and residents would be the
actual effect, not the result that Donald Trump is selling to largely
economics illiterate supporters. This is the antithesis of what Trump
claims he would do in making America great again. Going this time to
economists from a far right source, although this is a finding broadly
found across the political spectrum of economics, we see from the National Review,
in reference to actual tariffs imposed on China by the Obama
administration, that relate directly to auto manufacturing and
consumption:

By 2009, the United States was importing tires from China at a rate
of about 50 million per year. The United Steel, Paper and Forestry,
Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial, and Service Workers
International Union complained to the Obama administration that there
was a “large, rapid, and continuing” increase in the number of
Chinese-made tires entering American markets. In September of that year,
Obama approved relief for domestic producers by increasing tariffs on
most new tire imports for three years.

But the tariff also forced consumers to spend $1.1 billion more on
tires than they otherwise would have — or roughly $900,000 per U.S. tire
industry job created. And retaliatory tariffs imposed by the Chinese
further hurt our economy. In early 2010, China’s Ministry of Commerce
imposed tariffs ranging from 50.3 to 105.4 percent on American poultry
imports, which “reduced exports by $1 billion as U.S. poultry firms
experienced a 90 percent collapse in their exports of chicken parts to
China,” according to Hufbauer and Lowry.

It is obvious that consumers, already hard pressed by weak income
growth, would see their buying power further constrained. But many would
also discover their jobs are threatened. Our economy is currently
deeply linked to the rest of the world, and millions of U.S. workers are
employed in companies that sell imported goods and use imported
components in the products they manufacture in the USA. Trump’s tariffs
would wreak havoc with global supply chains and force many companies to
reduce employment. In addition, foreigners would undoubtedly retaliate
against our exports as they would be entitled to do under our trade
agreements. Think about what a trade war would do to investment and
employment.

As to Trump's claims about US companies, he does not prepare well for debates and other policy presentation; he is not factual, he does NOT do his homework. He was WRONG WRONG WRONG about Ford motor company sending jobs to Mexico costing US jobs. They are shifting their LESS POPULAR models to Mexico, where they will no doubt be sold across Mexico, Central and South America as well as some brought back into the US. Trump utterly fails to understand the US global market for US cars, unlike the analysis done by the LA Times on such sales. But there is entirely new manufacturing in the same facility which is being retooled here. NO jobs are being lost, and some new jobs are being created by the retooling process.

The automaker quickly shot down Donald Trump's latest hyperbolic claim, made on Fox News Thursday, that Ford plans to "fire all its employees in the United States" as part of a plan to build a plant in Mexico.
Ford said there will be zero job losses in the U.S. as a result of the new plant in Mexico. The Wayne, Michigan, plant that now builds the Focus and C-Max that will move to Mexico will instead start building other models -- probably the new Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger small pickup.
"Ford has been in the United States for more than 100 years. Our home is here. We will be here forever," said spokeswoman Christine Baker.
The company has 85,000 U.S. employees, up 28,000, or nearly 50%, in just the last five years. It has 8,800 employees at Mexican plants, and will add 2,800 jobs there when the new $1.6 billion plant opens there in 2018.
Ford committed to build new vehicles at the Michigan Assembly Plant to take the place of the Focus and C-Max when it reached a new contract late last year with the United Auto Workers union, which represents 3,900 hourly workers at the plant.
And while Ford is shifting production of all small cars to Mexico, it will continue to make many car models at U.S. plants, including the iconic Mustang.
The small cars Ford is shifting to Mexico are less popular and less profitable models.
Trump has been using Ford for months as a prime example of what's wrong with U.S. trade policy, but Ford has been strongly rebutting the GOP nominee.
The issue surfaced again on Wednesday when a Ford executive, speaking at a conference for investors, reiterated the company's plans to move its small car production to Mexico.
During a Fox News interview, Trump vowed to impose a 35% tax on cars built in Mexico if they're shipped back to the U.S.
"They think they're going to get away with this and they fire all their employees in the United States and...move to Mexico," said Trump. "When that car comes back across the border into our country that now comes in free, we're gonna charge them a 35% tax. And you know what's gonna happen, they're never going to leave."

This is called protectionism; it doesn't work. Trump's policy plan for reducing the outsourcing of jobs has been widely debunked as crap by economists who have looked at how this has worked when it was tried before. It hurts, not helps, the economy and does not result in significant job saving.

There was no positive thing done by Donald Trump for ANY Americans, least of all black Americans in promoting birtherism, or in the goal of birtherism to de-legitimize the first black President by attacking his citizenship.

That is a spin too far.

Rather than quote his self-congratulatory toxic sludge, here is the video of the worst of his comments during the debate.

Hat tip to the Washington Monthly for the video link that demonstrates the reality of black American feeling, with which Trump is dangerously, tragically out of touch. This kind of thinking portends policies that will incite a firestorm of racial unrest, the furthest possible antithesis of national healing.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Call it lies, or call it ignorance; either way it does not reflect well on Trump for president. Stop and Frisk does not decrease crime.

Among the many ways that Trump was wrong, or outright lied, in the
first presidential debate was on Stop and Frisk - among many other
topics.
Stop an Frisk does not work, as well as being
unconstitutional. Trump knows, or should know, that to be true.
Instead he persists in defending the indefensible.
The fourth
amendment guarantees against the overreach of governmental authority,
which conservatives give empty lip service claims to valuing:

The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

And
the NYC Civil Liberties Union found that Stop and Frisk erodes
community confidence in the police, while NOT being effective in
stopping crime. Effectively, there is no up side, while there is a
significant down side to stop and frisk. Further it argues for a failure to grasp basic cause and effect.

“While
violent crimes fell 29 percent in New York City from 2001 to 2010, other
large cities experienced larger violent crime declines without relying
on stop and frisk abuses: 59 percent in Los Angeles, 56 percent in New
Orleans, 49 percent in Dallas, and 37 percent in Baltimore."

There were a number of fact check failures for Trump, most notably that he was wrong on ISIS controlling oil in Libya, he was wrong on blaming Obama for the way we left Iraq, and he was especially wrong about Clinton and her campaign starting birtherism.

TRUMP STATEMENT: ISIS has “oil all over the place, including the oil, a lot of the oil, in Libya.”FACT CHECK: According
to a Bloomberg analysis, Libyan oil fields and pipelines are controlled
by a combination of the Government of National Accord, allies of the
Tripoli Petroleum Facilities Guard, and the Libyan National Army (and
groups aligned with them).
Claudia Gazzini, a Tripoli-based senior
analyst at the International Crisis Group, told the Washington Post
that it was simply not true that the Islamic State has control of any
Libyan oil.
“While it is true that ISIS has attacked oil fields in
the Sirte basin area and destroyed key equipment there, they have not
sought to keep control of the oil fields,” Gazzini said.

and

Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager, told Wolf Blitzer
a volunteer forwarded an email promoting “birtherism” and that that
person was fired. “The campaign nor Hillary did not start the ‘birther’
movement, period, end of story,” Solis Doyle told CNN, saying the
volunteer’s actions were “beyond the pale” and that Clinton called Obama
campaign manager David Plouffe to apologize.

Blumenthal, a
longtime Clinton confidante but not a current campaign staffer, denies
ever contacting McClatchy; the former McClatchy bureau chief, James
Asher, recently said he clearly recalled the conversation with
Blumenthal.

What CBS either omitted or did not know is that James Asher no longer is making the claim of recalling the Blumenthal conversation, and that the investigatory mission to Kenya by McClatchy news was the result of multiple stories being published at the time.

Trump fat out LIED when he claimed he only filed for bankruptcy four times -- which is a LOT of bankruptcies. Four bankruptcies argues being very bad at business. It was not four it was six bankruptcies.

Again per CBS and politifact (because it is important to multisource):

FACT CHECK: Clinton is correct. When Politifact looked
into this issue, they found six times that Trump has filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection: The Trump Taj Mahal in 1991; Trump Castle in
1992; Trump Plaza and Casino in 1992; the Plaza Hotel in 1992; Trump
Hotels and Casinos Resorts in 2004; and Trump Entertainment Resorts in
2009.

I think my greatest outrage is that Trump believes he is in some way more presidential APPEARING than Clinton. Ms. Clinton was elegantly groomed and very presentable. Trump in contrast, has demanded that his appearance NOT be an issue, while he has repeatedly demeaned his women opponents from Carly Fiorina to Clinton, and has demeaned women more broadly, including those in his employ. Women are not qualified or unqualified from office on the basis of appearance. But if we were going to assess ability on the basis of appearance, Trump is a fat, jowly, puffy-eyed, badly spray-tanned smirking swine with an unattractive piece of roadkill on his head, like a tacky version of a Daniel Boone hat. He is in no position to criticize anyone's appearance, other than he clearly believes this view of women as sexual objects and male accessories, sometimes called the demeaning term eye candy, is the exclusive prerogative of men.

The hypocrisy in this, the obscene double standard, is that Trump behaved badly, interrupting Clinton repeatedly - in the first 26 minutes of the debate, Trump interrupted Hillary 25 times, per Vox.

Manterrupting, defined by journalist and author Feminist Fight Club Jessica Bennett
as “unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man,” is a phenomenon that
many professional women are (unfortunately) familiar with.
A 2014 study found that women are significantly more likely to be interrupted than men are, and research has shown that when women do speak up,
their words are given less weight and treated as less valid than men’s.
This phenomenon is especially problematic in fields ― like politics ―
which are dominated by men’s voices just by virtue of the numbers.
Women who want to circumvent these professional obstacles have to
learn to play the game, and part of that game means dealing with the
frustrating habits of one’s male colleagues ― or in the case of a
presidential race, one’s political opponents. As Clinton well knows, in
order to avoid having her words dismissed, she has to modulate the way
she presents her ideas in a way that male candidates simply don’t.
To Clinton’s credit, she appeared unperturbed by Trump’s attempts to
verbally bulldoze over her. Each and every time, she kept speaking,
often with a sly smile. Because as any professional woman knows, the
best way to shut down a manterrupter is to simply refuse to acknowledge
him.

Although to be fair, Trump also talked over the moderator, and Hillary Clinton in the second half of the debate did interrupt Trump a few times as well, 17 total to Trump interrupting her 51 times.

I hope this was not a drinking game exercise for the good folks over at Vox.

Counting the interruptions of both candidates by
moderator Lester Holt, Clinton was interrupted a total of 70 times, and
Trump was interrupted 47 times.

Some of Trump’s interruptions of Clinton featured outright lies, like insisting that he never said climate change was a Chinese conspiracy, or denying that he ever said some of the offensive things about women that Clinton called him out on saying.

Some of his interruptions were petulant asides; at one point he even threw in a one-word, schoolboy-like “Not.”

Other interruptions turned into loud, insistent
filibusters, with Trump barreling over Clinton until she finally smiled
and relented to let him keep talking — or until Holt interjected to
insist that Trump give Clinton her allotted two minutes to talk.

If anything renders someone "unpresidential" it would be this Trump failure to control his mouth and his toxic attitudes of special entitlement towards others.

Nerds of a certain age have wanted their very own transformer since the very first time we watched Optimus kick the crap out of Megatron thirty-some years ago. Now, thanks to an ambitious Turkish company, that dream may finally come true.
According to Gizmodo, a company out of Ankara, Turkey called Letvision unveiled a transforming robot based on a BMW 3 Series coupe. A series of videos hosted on Letvision's website and YouTube account showed Letrons, as the bright red transformer is called, being put through its paces by an operator with a remote control.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Much ado about nothing has been made of the Clinton staffer who was fired for circulating an email questioning Obama's birthplace.

No one however has ever claimed that the staffer WROTE that email. Here is a copy of that email, via Snopes, and their observations about the email origins and circulation.

“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his
Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel
by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took
him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that
surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008.

That Hillary Clinton supporters circulated such an e-mail isn't in
question, but the claim that that's the moment the birther theory "first
emerged" simply isn't true. The likeliest point of origin we've been
able to find was a post on conservative message board FreeRepublic.com dated 1 March 2008 (which, according to a report in The Telegraph, was at least a month before Clinton supporters got on the e-mail bandwagon):

I was told today that Obama swore in on a Koran for his
Senate seat. I do not believe he did. Can someone clarify this for me? I
am under the impression only a Congressman has so far sworn in on a
Koran.
Also that Obama’s mother gave birth to him overseas and then
immediately flew into Hawaii and registered his birth as having taken
place in Hawaii.
Again, any clarifications on this? Defintely disqualifies him for
Prez. There must be some trace of an airticket. While small babies are
not charged air fare they do have a ticket issued for them.
Long time ago but there may be some residual information somewhere.
Good ammo (if available and true) BEST USED AFTER he becomes PREZ (if
that occurs) and it’s too late for Dems - except accept the VP.

Politico did a great job tracking down who really DID originate birtherism in a recent article in 2008:

“As we reported, some of her supporters flirted with the idea in 2008
— but it has its origins in the fever swamps beginning in Illinois in
2004,” he said.
In fact, birtherism, as it’s been called, reportedly began with
innuendo by serial Illinois political candidate Andy Martin, who painted
Obama as a closet Muslim in 2004. That spiraled into a concerted effort
by conspiracy theorists to raise doubts about Obama’s birthplace and
religion — and essentially paint him as un-American.
Martin, who briefly launched a little-noticed presidential campaign last year, has disavowed the movement he’s often credited with starting, though he still foments similarly discredited doubts about Obama’s religion.
...On Friday, Clinton’s former senior aide Patti Solis Doyle acknowledged
that a volunteer coordinator in Iowa forwarded a birther-related email.
“Hillary made the decision immediately let that person go,” she said.
“We let that person go. It was so beyond the pale of the campaign
Hillary wanted to run and that we as a staff wanted to run that I called
David Plouffe who was managing Barack Obama to apologize to say this is
not coming from us, that this was rogue volunteer.”

And here is Mr. Martin, courtesy of internet video from 2008 -- see how easy it is for Trump and the GOP to fact check? That they don't is a choice for willful ignorance:

The New York Times, back in 2008, did a great job digging into this, elaborating on those in the right, from the 'Freeepers" aka the Free Republic crackpots and extremist conspiracy theorists, and via Fox Not-News, to rabidly Anti-Semite Andy Martin, to equally radical righties who are pro-Israel Jews. Politics truly makes strange bedfellows.

But
an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel
watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin,
and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to
assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to
overthrow the government.

An
examination of legal documents and election filings, along with
interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man
with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has
left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments —
among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more
than 30 years.

He
is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was
blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe
character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid
flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though
he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of
lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for
both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice,
in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a
writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody
uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however,
that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own
fantasies.”

As
for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always
somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When
questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and
claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said
Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It
was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News
program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in
Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous
Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also
been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits
that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without
preliminary approval.

He
prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where
paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to
exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State
Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for
president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire
that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

It is worth noting that Andy Martin is running again for President, per Ballotpedia, as a Republican. Again. Also according to Ballotpedia, Andy Martin a week ago lost a run for Congress as a Republican in New Hampshire.for the 2nd Congressional District.

So far as I can determine, while Martin attempted to run as a Dem, he got further and more often running as a Republican and he has always been a bigot and a conservative.

Also from the 2008 NYT article, some of the other players in the birtherism conspiracy theory are identified. They are pertinent to include here, because so many tin-foil hat wearing right wing bigots are still repeating them:

Theories
about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But
independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind
up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web
site in August 2004.

Its
general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded
falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it,
including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr.
Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr.
Martin.

“What
he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a
professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who
has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and
it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would
have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms.
Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when
a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret
practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article
circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way
into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama
had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the
radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging
jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr.
Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he
was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for
two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions,
where he was taught about the Koran.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Starting your Monday with something fun:

Seriously, it was a delight to watch the Trump surrogates squirm as they tried to shift attention away from why Trump has been a hard core birther, making his political bones on it, for five years, and then flip flopped NOW.
The Trump machine and the GOP at least in the person of Rancid Preibus, have LIED about connecting birtherism to Hillary Clinton, and been badly busted on it. Hooray for the media - for a change.

Friday, September 16, 2016

In this morning's Factcheck.org feed, to which I subscribe, was this about Trump's (and in his condidacy day's Cruz's) claim that Hillary Clinton was a birther.

She wasn't, and Factcheck.org documents that very well, as far back as July 2015.

Everything old is new again. I can rely on my friend Mitch Berg, over at SitD, to demonstrate almost daily everything wrong about blogging and the right wing; specifically I can rely on him to remind me of everything I DON'T want to be as a blogger. I can also count on him to repeat every vile attack and factually false claim made by the right without substantive fact checking.

That only works where you have fact-averse conservatives who are more interested in having their prejudices stroked than in factual accuracy. Mitch can safely rely on his many radical right wing readers to avoid fact checking as personally painful.

Was Hillary Clinton the Original ‘Birther’?

Two Republican presidential candidates claim the so-called “birther”
mhttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6337568240689378702#editor/target=post;postID=782530987619291560ovement originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008. While
it’s true that some of her ardent supporters pushed the theory, there is
no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with it.
In an interview on June 29, Sen. Ted Cruz said “the whole birther
thing was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008,” and earlier
this year, Donald Trump claimed “Hillary Clinton wanted [Obama’s] birth
certificate. Hillary is a birther.”
Neither Cruz nor Trump presented any evidence that Clinton or anyone
on her campaign ever questioned Obama’s birthplace, demanded to see his
birth certificate, or otherwise suggested that Obama was not a “natural
born citizen” eligible to serve as president.
For those unfamiliar with the controversy over Obama’s birthplace,
it refers to those who contend that Obama was born in Kenya and
ineligible to be president.
At FactCheck.org, we have written about the issue of Obama’s birthplace on multipleoccasions
— indeed we were the first media organization to hold his birth
certificate in our hot little hands and vouch for the authenticity of
it. But facts have done little to squelch the conspiracy theories that
continue to bounce around online.
(quoting Ted Cruz)
“It’s interesting, the whole birther thing was started by the Hillary
Clinton campaign in 2008 against Barack Obama,” Cruz said (at about the
25:25 mark). Cruz then went on to say that he believes he clearly meets
the constitutional requirement for a president to be a “natural born
citizen.”
The claim about Clinton’s tie to “birthers” was made earlier by Donald Trump in February at the CPAC event (at 24:20 mark). Trump — who has a history
of pushing bogus theories about Obama’s birth — said, “Hillary Clinton
wanted [Obama’s] birth certificate. Hillary is a birther. She wanted …
but she was unable to get it.”
According to the [Politico April 22, 2011] article, the theory that Obama was born in Kenya
“first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated
an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.”
The second article, which ran several days after the Politico piece, was published by the Telegraph, a British paper, which stated:
“An anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama’s
main rival for the party’s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the
national spotlight — that he had not been born in Hawaii.”
Both of those stories comport with what we here at FactCheck.org wrote
two-and-a-half years earlier, on Nov. 8, 2008: “This claim was first
advanced by diehard Hillary Clinton supporters as her campaign for the
party’s nomination faded, and has enjoyed a revival among John McCain’s
partisans as he fell substantially behind Obama in public opinion
polls.”
Both of those stories comport with what we here at FactCheck.org wrote
two-and-a-half years earlier, on Nov. 8, 2008: “This claim was first
advanced by diehard Hillary Clinton supporters as her campaign for the
party’s nomination faded, and has enjoyed a revival among John McCain’s
partisans as he fell substantially behind Obama in public opinion
polls.”
Claims about Obama’s birthplace appeared in chain emails bouncing
around the Web, and one of the first lawsuits over Obama’s birth
certificate was filed by Philip Berg, a former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general and a self-described “moderate to liberal” who supported Clinton.
But none of those stories suggests any link between the Clinton
campaign, let alone Clinton herself, and the advocacy of theories
questioning Obama’s birth in Hawaii.
One of the authors of the Politico story, Byron Tau, now a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, told FactCheck.org via email that “we never found any links between the Clinton campaign and the rumors in 2008.”
The other coauthor of the Politico story, Ben Smith, now the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, said in a May 2013 interview on
MSNBC that the conspiracy theories traced back to “some of [Hillary
Clinton’s] passionate supporters,” during the final throes of Clinton’s
2008 campaign. But he said they did not come from “Clinton herself or
her staff.”
Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said Cruz’s
claim is false. “The Clinton campaign never suggested that President
Obama was not born here,” Schwerin wrote to us in an email. It is certainly interesting, and perhaps
historically and politically relevant, that “birther” advocacy may have
originated with supporters of Hillary Clinton — especially since many
view it as an exclusively right-wing movement. But whether those
theories were advocated by Clinton and/or her campaign or simply by
Clinton “supporters” is an important distinction. Candidates are
expected to be held accountable for the actions of their campaigns.
Neither Cruz nor Trump, whose campaign did not respond to our request
for backup material, provides any compelling evidence that either
Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with starting the so-called
birther movement.

— Robert Farley

Now over at SitD, Mitch cites the disreputable and unreliable, not credible source of Breitbart which is no more news than Fakes TV, claiming a Clinton campaign exec plotted the birtherism controversy.

NOT TRUE. And the birther movement is nothing if not the definition of 'negative'.

As covered by a different entry from Factcheck.org that came out this afternoon specifically faulting Trump as a liar noted:

Trump on Birtherism: Wrong, and Wrong

On March 19, 2007, then Clinton adviser Mark Penn wrote a strategy memo to
Clinton that identified Obama’s “lack of American roots” as something
that “could hold him back.” That memo, which was part of campaign
documents featured in a September 2008 article in TheAtlantic,
cited Obama’s “boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii” as life
experiences that made his “basic American values … at best limited.” But
Penn’s memo did not question Obama’s birthplace or his birth
certificate. It advised Clinton to contrast her life experiences in
middle America “without turning negative.”
“We are never going to say anything about his background,” Penn wrote.
Again, if there is evidence that Clinton or her campaign had
something to do with the origins of the so-called birther movement,
we’ve yet to see it. And Trump has never offered any proof.

Shame shame shame on the right, including local bloggers, for trying to excuse their nominee by trying to tar someone else with his lies. I can only speculate how many of his supporters who still believe this rubbish - because so many conservatives of the ilk who support Trump, the deplorables, DO believe lies like this - will now be discontented with their evil candidate.

Bur dishonesty is the only alternative when facts are consistently not on your side.

It does not matter if you are a hard working American or a religious American, IF you also are a hateful bigot.

You are a bigot if you try to deny the LGBT the rights to be treated as full and equal human beings. LGBT people work hard too. You are a bigot if you are racist; you are a bigot if you support the many ways the right treats women as second class citizens. You are a bigot if you have fear and antipathy towards immigrants and towards people of different religions than your own - notably Muslims, but in some cases on the right also anti-Judaism.

Those things make an American a deplorable person; they do so because these people are harmful and unfair to other Americans. There are Americans who genuinely suffer and are victimized by these deplorables, while their contributions are no better than those towards whom they are bigoted.

David Duke is one of those deplorable human beings. Mike Pence refuses to call him out as a deplorable human being, or to call out his behavior and beliefs. Mike Pence uses the excuse that he is not a name-caller.

This from the man who daily calls Hillary crooked Hillary, despite the lack of any criminal conviction.

This from the man who is on the same ticket as a man convicted of racism, and who is credibly accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape, as well as a long history of rampant misogyny and ethnic bias, a promiscuous serial adulterer married to a porn queen, who engages in widespread fraud and corruption.

Oh, Mike Pence -- BEWARE! That much lying and hypocrisy could still get you that zap from above! That goes for you Mike Pence, and the guy next to you, with the bleached dead racoon on his head and the tiny but greedy grasping hands.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

I remember where I was when the Twin Towers were struck in New York City. I was watching Good Morning America, which had outside cameras on their building that caught the entire event, and where the anchors cut to immediate coverage.

Like Pearl Harbor, like presidential assassinations, it marked an extraordinary catalyst that changed our history, that dramatically changed how we live and think.

F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11

Maj.
Heather Penney, and her father Col. John Penney, both pilots. Maj.
Penny flew an F-16 on Sept. 11, 2001, that was destined to intercept and
possibly bring down Flight 93.Penny Family Photo

WASHINGTON — Late
in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather
“Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to
fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders:
Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked
airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the
first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The
one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was
live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile
aircraft.

Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in
that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and
her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing
757.

“We wouldn’t be shooting it down.
We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her charge that day. “I
would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”

This is all the more remarkable in the context of the current presidential election cycle, where the GOP candidate is praised by retired high level military officers who signed an open letter supporting him, who want women out of the military in any significant numbers and especially in front line and combat positions. We have a presidential nominee for the GOP who blames military rape on women serving in the military, while ignoring that the serious problem with his argument, and the same fault with his campaign's statements: most military rapes are men being raped by other men.

That fails correctly to define the problem of sexual assault, and it blames the victim. More to the point, in a volunteer military, it deprives the armed forces of the services of highly patriotic and highly competent personnel.

Sadly we have the divisive push from the right that is anti-women, anti-Muslims (and those mistaken for Muslims), anti-immigrants, the anti-LGBT, and the usual other deplorable assorted racists and intolerant bigots. We are weaker now from ignorance, not because of what we did to oppose terrorism, but because of what we did not learn, because of hate and suspicion and bigotry, because of political division that benefits the right in propagandizing their base for fund raising and right wing voter turn out.

I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can
say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong
control over a country.Now, it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the
system. But certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than
our president has been a leader. We have a divided country.

The bottom line, Trump admires and praises dictatorship. There is nothing more contrary, opposite, anathema to the United States than admiration for a dictator and a dictatorship, one which has acted against the United States repeatedly through cyberattacks.
No one should admire Putin, or the government of Russia. No presidential candidate should praise an enemy of the United States.
The word for Putin: Dictator.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Some in the media are giving unwarranted attention to the open letter
in support of Donald Trump, with 88 high ranking military officer
signatures. The media is being lazy in failing to provide a context
which shows how deplorable the double digit support really is.

Except NO. Not a big deal. Rather we have nearly 900 CURRENTLY
serving top brass, and THOUSANDS with that rank who are retired. Our
armed forces are top heavy to the point of being dangerously ineffectual
and inefficient.

From the Congressional Research Service, this past February:

…the general and flag officer corps has increased as a percentage of
the total force over the past five decades. GFOs made up about
one-twentieth of one percent (0.048%) of the total force in 1965, while
they made up about one-fifteenth of one percent (0.069%) of the total
forcein 2015, indicating that the share of the total force made up of
GFOs increased by 43%. Some argue that this increased proportion of GFOs
is wasteful and contributes to more bureaucratic decision making
processes.

From the US News and World Report, regarding the efforts by then DOD
head Robert Gates’ efforts in 2010 to reduce the high costs of this
arguably unnecessary parts of our military:

A May 2013 GAO analysis
found that the number of support staff at DoD’s Combatant Command
headquarters grew “by about 50 percent from fiscal years 2001 through
2012.” This has created added distance between commanders and
warfighters. “In some cases the gap between me and an action officer may
be as high as 30 layers,” Gates once stated, resulting in a “bureaucracy which has the fine motor skills of a dinosaur.”

A top-heavy military also has serious financial costs.
Despite a declining defense budget, generals and admirals continue to
live like kings, living in mansions and surrounding themselves with
entourages that would make Jay-Z envious. In fact, according to a recent
Los Angeles Times report, there are “hundreds of high-priced homes in the Pentagon inventory.” Just operating and maintaining these homes can exceed $100,000 annually; some homes, like those on prime waterfront real estate at D.C.’s Fort McNair, cost around $1 million to renovate.

It is my considered opinion that no matter how much patriotism you
demonstrate in military service, when you openly hate so many Americans —
3% of Americans are Muslim, another 8-10% are LGBTQ, and women at
50,8%, then you are un-American and even anti-American. That is not the
path to American greatness.

Gee, so Trump wants to spend more on our military, and has apparently
persuaded these signatory high ranking officers that there is something
in it for them. And as the Atlantic noted, most of these officers are pretty much desk jockeys with little real war experience:

None of the signatories [to the Trump letter] was a
service chief or led a major combatant command. The most prominent
ex-military official backing Trump remains Lieutenant General Michael
Flynn, who served in senior intelligence roles in Afghanistan but is
best known as Obama’s appointee to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Flynn delivered a lengthy and impassioned address in support of Trump
at the Republican National Convention and was reportedly under
consideration to be his running mate. As The New York Timesnoted,
two of the signatories on the letter are best known for their
controversial statements about Islam and, in the case of Lieutenant
General Thomas McInerey, for filing court documents challenging Obama’s
eligibility to serve as president and command the military. Another
signatory is listed as a major general in the California State Military
Reserve, which is not a branch of the U.S. armed forces (although he did
previously serve in the U.S. Army reserve).

It is worth noting in passing that near the top of the list of the
rightwingers supporting Trump is Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who has in the
past been notoriously DISINVITED from this year’s Army prayer breakfast,
has been reprimanded in the past for his extreme views, including
anti-Islam, and he currently one of the heads of the bigot spigot hate
group The Family Research Council. He is pro-torture and has been
reprimanded for leaking classified information. This is highly
hypocritical when Boykin who has received strong support from Trump is noted by the WaPo for releasing highly classified military information:

The Army struck back last year, quietly issuing him a
scathing reprimand following a criminal investigation that concluded he
had wrongfully released classified information, according to an Army
document obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of
Information Act request.
According to the Jan. 23, 2013, memorandum, the Army determined that
Boykin’s book disclosed “classified information concerning cover
methods, counterterrorism/counter-proliferation operations, operational
deployments, infiltration methods, pictures, and tactics, techniques and
procedures that may compromise ongoing operations.”

This is the height of hypocrisy, far worse than anything Hillary
Clinton has been accused and acquitted of doing regarding national
security.

I suppose we should be thankful there are so few top brass bigots like
Boykin who support Trump, relative to past conservative presidential
candidates. Better if there were none.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Following the recent right wing propaganda driven BS about the American flag being prohibited at a South Carolina High School sporting event that I wrote about, which conveniently and dishonestly neglected to mention that those American flags were ONLY brought to games against a largely Hispanic opposing team, and used to taunt the other team, rather than for valid patriotic purposes, it is worth debunking this persistent right wing propaganda lie as well.

I recently saw this particular rubbish accusation included in an anti-Ilhan Omar comment in a piece over at City Pages, where Obama was blamed for banning the pledge so immigrants like Omar could avoid saying the 'pladge' of allegiance (why are so many right wingers also poor spellers?), assorted references to God, and the questioning of the legal citizenship status of Ms. Omar.

That of course ignores and denies all of the processes that immigrants go through including swearing allegiance to the USA, but it plays into xenophobic fears that the right likes to stoke with their agitation propaganda. It also promotes the LIE that people are voting and running for office who are not citizens, in spite of the many ways this is prevented. Voters, candidates and election judges ALL demonstrate proof of citizenship at some point or points in the election process.

Obama Did Not Ban the Pledge

FULL QUESTION

Did Obama sign Executive Order 13738, revoking the federal
government’s official recognition of the Pledge of Allegiance and
banning it in public schools? Did he say the language of the pledge is
“divisive” and “contrary to America’s deepest held values”?

FULL ANSWER

The rumor that President Barack Obama banned the Pledge of Allegiance
in public schools originated from a satirical article posted last month
by a fake news website under the headline “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools Nationwide.” The
site is designed to look like ABC News, but uses the URL
“abcnews.com.co,” the first tip-off that this isn’t a legitimate news
site.
The made-up story begins: “Early this morning, President Obama made
what could very well prove to be the most controversial move of his
presidency with the signing of Executive Order 13738, which revokes the
federal government’s official recognition of the Pledge of Allegiance.”
It goes on to say the order makes it “illegal for any federally funded
agency to display the pledge or for any federal employee to recite, or
encourage others to recite, the pledge while on duty,” which also
applies to “public schools.” Those who violate the order, the bogus
story says, “can face fines of up to $10,000 and up to one year in
federal prison.”
The satire becomes abundantly clear for those who read on. The story
includes quotes from “Sock it Forward, a group that provides the
homeless and those less fortunate with brand new socks” and “Fappy the
Anti-Masturbation Dolphin.”
And then there’s this description of “abcnews.com.co” at the bottom:

abcnews.com.co: Thanks to ABC News
President & CEO, Dr. Paul Horner for making ABC News the greatest
website in the universe. We need writers! Contact us! Looking to
advertise? Contact us! All trademarks, service marks, trade names, trade
dress, product names, images and logos appearing on the site are the
property of their respective owners. Do you have a complaint? We love to
hear them! You can call our complaint department directly at (785)
273-0325. Do you have a problem with self-rape? Are you looking to get
off the Devil’s playground? Fappy The Anti-Masturbation Dolphin can
help! Praise Fappy! We reserve the right to change, modify or delete
comments on this website, so post accordingly!

The real president of ABC News is James Goldston. Paul Horner is an internet satirist who has created many fake news websites, articles and hoaxes. He takes responsibility for the pledge article on another one
of his websites. The phone number listed for the “complaint
department,” as well as at the bottom of the article as an “Obama
administration hotline,” is the number of the Westboro Baptist Church,
which is best known for its anti-gay views and protests.

An executive order with the number 13738 does exist, but it deals
with labor laws and the federal government’s use of private contractors.
It has nothing to do with the Pledge of Allegiance. Obama signed it
on Aug. 23, and the text is available from the U.S. Government Publishing Office. The National Archives also publishes an official list of all executive orders issued by Obama.

There's more on this at Factcheck.org, and you should read it for yourself, but I think this sufficiently makes the point. Few righties eager to believe the propaganda feed that is the primary purpose of the right wing media, ranging from talk radio to Fakes News, to the most egregious statements made by the GOP candidates for office will ever do their own fact checking, or pay attention to it when their noses are rubbed in it. But at least we can limit the extent to which right wing agit prop takes hold this election cycle. We can push back against the dumbing down and the stupefying of America, one post at a time, day after day.

Turning up the heat on right wing lies

Opinions

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

― Isaac Asimov, "A Cult of Ignorance," Newsweek (Jan. 1980)

We stand with PP

past wisdom

"I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."Billy Graham - Parade (1 February 1981)

An astute observation from Bertrand Russell

"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

Penigma is pro-feminism, pro-thought

Ignorance is a choice

Just Do it!

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